Monopoly with a Seven-Year-Old (Patreon)

When I was younger, some friends of the family would hold this annual shit show they affectionately referred to as “The Buddy Bash.” This motley group of friends-since-highschool — otherwise respectable, tax-paying, God-fearing Americans — would generally start on a Thursday, and wrap up around Sunday. The goal? To drink, chat, drink, hang out, drink, and operate open barbecues with ever-decreasing acumen. I am fairly certain the Fire Marshall should have been informed in advance of this annual fete, but as memory serves, he was Lucas’s dad, and when last we heard, he had passed out after a particularly ill-advised keg stand.

During the interim when sleep did occur for this Bacchanalian hoard, it was not unusual, on one's way to the bathroom or the fridge, to see grown-ass-adults passed out on couches, floors, in hallways, and in bathtubs. Motionless bodies, just everywhere. I had only recently seen “Saving Private Ryan,” and couldn’t help but be reminded of that scene at Normandy. At the time, I didn’t have the context to appreciate just how complicated a hangover after one night of reverie could be post-25, but these folks? Three nights? Massive props to ‘em. They’re made of different stuff than I. (Well, the same — usually German-Irish Americans, which tracks. Youth is truly wasted on the young.)

Most of them were parents to children who were unable to participate in the festivities, so us kids would be relegated to the oversized basement-slash-game room. During one of these years, I was the precarious age of 15: too old to be able to identify with the pre-adolescent kiddos; not old enough to have much autonomy, my driver’s license still a Gatsby-esque glimmering beacon of hope, just over the horizon. Thankfully, there were always a few other members of my age group hanging around as well; we knew enough to use the situation to our advantage, and over the course of the weekend, were able to sneak more-than our fair shares of Jell-O shots and a few brewskies.

1999 was a good year. We didn’t even have Nokias yet. The internet was still too slow to be of much use. The Nintendo 64 was solidly a thing (Temple, Slaps Only, One-Hit Kills, No Oddjob). But since members of my otherwise-analog generation hadn’t yet been sullied by digital proclivity, we retreated to board games. And at this house, there were lots and lots of board games.

My jam, and the game I had always been inclined toward, was Monopoly. It’s a game that needs no introduction — I would be shocked if any of you reading this had never played it at least once in your lives. The rules are pretty simple. Acquire wealth through real estate, and strive to be the one with all the resources (a standard that is very important to instill into budding Millennial minds: I will pay rent until I fucking die, and I’ll be damned proud of it!).

So, us older kids would pull out the board, start allocating the cash, and invariably observe the scuffle over who got to be the car. I was a thimble gal, so I never had much competition.

And then, invariably, one of the younger kids — this friggin' kid, especially — would come up to us. “Whaddya doing, I wanna play, toooo!”

OK, fine. “But I wanna be the car!”

We all knew what we were getting into. This particular brat (let’s say his name was… Billy, because I, for the life of me, honestly can't remember) was the sort of feckless mino-schmuck who would end up running to his parents (as he had on several similar occasions that weekend), who were probably balls deep in Yuengling No. 43, if we didn’t let him into the game. “Moooommy, Daaaaaddy, they won’t let me plaaaay!” And then the parents, who just wanted to forget, for one blissful weekend, that they were stuck with this little shit for another 11 years, would just say something along the lines of “Just let him play, would ya?” and our hands would be tied.

Fine, Billy can play. Just give him the fucking car. You get the dog. You get the battleship. 

The rest of us knew the rules. They’re not hard. Roll the dice, buy properties, auctions sometimes, pay rent, go directly to jail, free parking cash allowed, collect your $200 when you 'round 'Go,' yada yada. In my case, I was a bit more of a connoisseur, and while I wasn’t a grandmaster or anything, years of practice had instilled a few strategies.

• In a game with two dice, the most likely number to turn up is 7, with 6 and 8 just behind, and the other numbers, ever-less likely to turn up as they deviate from the middle. 

•The Oranges are the best: return on investment is generous, and you’re only 6, 8, or 9 rolls from the folks getting out of jail. 

• Stay away from the glitz and glamor of Boardwalk and Park Place, at least until you have suitable capital to back you up. 

• Hotels are for fools; as there are only 32 houses available in a standard set, hoarding them creates a shortage, which you can use to your advantage. 

• If a property goes up for auction and nobody wants it, make sure you procure it for as small a price as possible, as it might be valuable later. 

• Don’t save your cash early on, and later in the game, stay in jail for as long as you can. 

• Utilities are useless, and railroads are golden geese. 

• Be shrewd. 

• Be merciless. 

• Make Atlantic City, New Jersey your bitch.

When playing with my contemporaries, I would exercise every approach I could use to my advantage. But, I’m not a complete monster: when playing with the youths, a normal kid of say, 7-years-old, I would go a little easier on ‘em. A lot of little kids just want to have fun, and want to feel like one of the big kids, which I get — we’ve all been there, right?

But Billy? Billy could go straight to hell. I hated that kid. We all did. He was just one of those kids who was just easy to hate.

We knew it was coming.

First roll, older kid, lands on Oriental Avenue. Cool.

Second kid, lands on Chance, advances to St. Charles Place. Alright.

Third kid, Income Tax. Ouch… first move, and you pay $200. Bummer.

Me, Reading Railroad. Sweet, I’ll take it.

Billy. Rolls a 3, lands on Baltic Avenue, $60. He starts to count out an incorrect amount of money — $160 — because public education is terribly underfunded in the United States, and Billy is a blithering, combative moron.

“Billy,” one of us says, “It’s only $60, so you don’t need to pay that much.” Billy thinks for a second, and counts out $30.

“No, Billy, it’s $60. So you need to pay a $50, and a $10. Or three $20s”

“But I don’t want to pay more.”

“Well,” says the older kid, “That’s the price. All of us have paid what we owe, so you have to, too.”

Billy is not thrilled about this, but obliges. As memory serves, Older Kid had babysitting experience, which I imagine instills one with patience when it comes to meretricious budding thugs, as well as a certain level of reasoning ability.

Play continues. Properties are snatched up, and the next couple of rounds move along without incidence. Until Billy lands on Baltic Avenue, which he already owns. He’s ecstatic.

“You all have’ta pay me rent!” He extends his grimy little mitt.

One of the older kids, a note of irritation under his voice. “No, Billy, you already own that property, and you landed on it, so we don’t have to pay you.”

He looks at his card. “It says $4!” Our muscles collectively tense.

Then, in a pre-tantrum timbre that we’d heard a few times during that weekend, “Give me my $4!”

Swear to God, guys. Remember that “Twilight Zone” episode where Bill Mumy wouldn’t get his way, and would send people to the Cornfields? This untenable whippersnapper makes that dude look like one of the kids from “The Sandlot.”

A beat of silence. Jaws clenched. 

And then, it happens. 

The sanctity of the game is compromised as we each start counting out four white bank notes.

We know what this means. Right now? It’s just $4. But it’ll happen again, and while Billy is a moron, he’s no idiot. Precedent has been set. 

Play continues. Eventually, a trio of properties is obtained by one of us. The Yellows. This trio was obtained via bartering between players. But Billy wants in. Billy only has $400 left, but he offers $500, and is unwilling to trade any of his properties. Billy is told that he doesn’t have enough money, and even if he did, this is not his deal to be a part of. Business resumes, but only momentarily, as Billy screams, tears streaming, face red, and runs off to the back yard to consult with Mommy and Daddy.

As the first houses are erected, we hear a  guttural, belch-y shout from the back yard. “Just give him Marvin Gardens, Goddammit!!!”

Billy comes back inside, composed. Almost a little cocky. There's almost... almost a grin on his abominable little mug. He sees the houses on the yellows. As far as he’s concerned, belong to him now.

The game begins to erode. It’s a lost cause. It’s not fun anymore. Billy: 1; The Rest of Us: 0.

Slowly, through something akin to telepathy, we all take the same course: e match Billy’s strategy. If we all just called it a day, and began to pack away the board, Billy would just fucking explode again. So instead, with every move, we create some reason to intentionally lose to Billy. Billy buys a utility, we say that we need to pay him for the heating on the properties we own! When we run low on money and land on one of Billy’s squares, we ask him, very nicely, if he would please accept a property as a form of rent. When Billy passes Go, we all, with feigned reluctance, come up with some reason as to why we all owe him $200. One of us gets up to “use the bathroom.” We know he’s not coming back. So all of his assets go to... You guessed it. Billy.

Before too long, Billy wins. He owns all the things. Game over. Content, smirking, with this most punchable look of superiority, he hops off his chair, and goes to the TV, where he plays Super Mario 64. Alone. The rest of us need a Jell-O shot.

I’ve been thinking about this game of Monopoly a lot lately. When you play a game — any game — it’s important to play by the rules. Within rules, there are expectations, because everyone’s on the same level. Strategies are shaped within the confines. Things might not look too great for me at the moment, but if I power through, and use my guile and grit, and get just a little bit of luck, I can turn things around. That’s where the fun comes from.

But, if you play against an adversary who changes these rules, dashes the expectations, restructures the confines, often in some truly unexpected ways, it’s simply not sustainable. 

Some of the players remain patient. 

Some become angry. 

Some just check out altogether. 

And some of us are just too apathetic to feel anything. 

But all of us simply want it to be over.

I hope you’ve all been well, and that your holidays went as decently as can be expected. I’m sure some of you had to wrangle with cancelled flights, high gas prices, odd family members, and yet another period of time where your plans got turned on their heads. If so, I’m sorry about that.

I don’t really have much care for politics, and I tend to stay away from the news these days. 

We all subscribe to different beliefs, don’t we? Some of us are extremely passionate about those beliefs. But, I’d like to think that most of us fall… somewhere in the middle. Despite our reactions to dashed expectations and restructures confines, I think we all have two things we can agree upon:

The first is this lingering, adaptable, deeply human appreciation for community — this inherited instinct, locked deep within the most ancient lobes of our brains, that what is good for everybody is best for us. In the current context, I would like to believe (and this likely means something different for each individual) that we all share some degree of the fundamental idea that — and I know everyone’s sick of hearing it — we’re all in this together.

The second thing? Billy fucking sucks.